A Conversation with People who Don't Want to be Vaccinated (01/20/22)
Our country, and the world in general, is divided. This article gives an example of how to have a conversation with someone who has a different approach to the pandemic than you.

Exemplifications of Typical Topics: Mediator as a Playwright (Part 2) (09/10/21)
This article shows how to address double-standards and preaching without doing in a mediation.

Exemplifications of Typical Topics: Mediator as a Playwright (Part I) (08/26/21)
There are certain reoccurring themes, which frequently surface and resurface during the conversations, taking place during mediation meet-ups. These themes are often deeply ingrained in the conflicts, parties have with each other.

Questions and Questioning within the Conversational Framework (03/26/21)
Mediators mostly focus on differences between open-ended and pointed questions, Yet, there is much more to questioning and question-asking than that.

The Fault Lines of the Contemporary Political Divide - Part 3 (03/21/19)
This article by Milan Slama and Ken Rasmussen is the second part to discuss the current political divide.

The Fault Lines of the Contemporary Political Divide - Part 2 (03/15/19)
This article by Ken Rasmussen and Milan Slama is the second part to discuss the current political divide.

The Fault Lines of the Contemporary Ideological Divide - Part 1 (02/26/19)
This article discusses the ideological divide looking at conflict from both a mediator's (Part 1) and a therapist's perspective (Part 2).

Mediators in the Service of Helping Others (11/11/16)
It is a safe assumption that the majority of mediators consider themselves collaborators who like helping parties to find solutions with regard to their disputes or conflicts.

Opening the Mediator’s Toolbox: Practical Skills for the Investigator (10/24/16)
Although they have distinctive practices that differ in purpose, goals, and approach, workplace investigators and mediators share certain common objectives.

The Role of Imagination and Mediation (04/09/12)
Before you start the mediation process, you are already making some assessments. You imagine what kind of issues might occur. You imagine what kind of behavior you will have to deal with when it comes to interactions between parties. You picture their backgrounds and the environments they grew up in. As you go along you try to imagine their working environment, their personalities, and how they might act under various circumstances. To make it simple, you, the mediator, must do a lot of imagining.

Conflict and Conversational Practice-- Article 3 of 3 (10/31/11)
During the last couple of decades, different approaches have been developed and applied by many professionals who practice in the arena of conflict and dispute resolution. Many of us have heard about evaluative, facilitative, transformative, and narrative approaches to mediation. All of these approaches offer several valuable features and all have something in common.

Incommensurability of Values and Conflict (09/19/11)
In order to make comparisons intelligible requires that we apply some form of measure or utilize a unit of measurement. We need a uniform scale so that we know how to determine a higher or lower score.

Comparisons and Conflict: Can Smarts Cause Conflicts? (06/13/11)
As much as we believe that there is nothing better than a good old competition when it comes to the advancement of new ideas, new technologies, and ever expanding world economy, somewhere on the back of our minds there is this creeping thought that we simply cannot compete all the time and that there must be some place for collaborative and cooperative enterprise.

Mediating Pain And Suffering Is All About Balance (09/27/10)
For a while it always intrigued me how when mediating employment and personal injury cases, attorneys and their clients attach monetary value to their emotional distress. How these damages can be assessed is a problematic matter. How do we appraise what kind of monetary award plaintiffs deserve? What are the objective criteria, if any, we should apply to the subjective perceptions of injured parties?

Self-Awareness In Mediation (05/17/10)
This article addresses the importance of self-awareness as it relates to the process of mediation, to the performance of a mediator, and the parties involved in mediation. The article specifically considers mediators' ethical dilemma between engagement and disengagement when it comes to neutrality and protection of the parties involved in mediation.